GENERAL  ARMSTRONG’S 

*■  ■«■  ’  -  '■  ■'■■  ,  ,  | 

LIFE  AND  WORK 


BY 


FRANKLIN  CARTER,  PH.D.,  LL.D. 


EX-PRESIDENT  OF  WILLIAMS  COLLEGE 


GENERAL  ARMSTRONG’S 
LIFE  AND  WORK 


FOUNDER’S  DAY  ADDRESS,  1902 

BY 

FRANKLIN  CARTER,  PH.D.,  LL.D. 


EX-PRESIDENT  OF  WILLIAMS  COLLEGE 


PRESS  OF  THE  HAMPTON  NORMAL 
AND  AGRICULTURAL  INSTITUTE, 
HAMPTON,  VIRGINIA,  1917 


General  Armstrong’s  Life  and  Work 

An  address  delivered  January  tzventy -sixth,  nineteen  hundred  a?id 
two ,  in  Hampton  Institute  Memorial  Church ,  by  Franklin  Carter , 
Ph.D .,  LL.D .,  ex-President  of  Williams  College 

NOTHING  becomes  more  certain  to  one  who  believes  that  God  is, 
than  God’s  controlling  grasp  of  human  history.  Indeed,  to 
him  who  reads  aright,  there  is  no  more  convincing  proof  that  God  is, 
than  is  found  in  the  study  of  human  progress.  The  contemplation  of 
an  individual  life  is  sometimes  bewildering.  Many  a  man  with  good 
purpose  and  self-denying  aim  is  beaten  down  in  the  collision  of  forces 
that  envelop  him.  But  in  modern  days  we  nearly  always  wonder  at 
the  overwhelming  of  a  good  man  and  ask,  “Why  does  God  permit  it  ?” 
So  we  sometimes  wonder  at  the  disaster  which  befalls  a  nation  or  a 
race.  But  take  a  large  enough  view,  and  the  destruction  of  Car¬ 
thage,  the  prostration  of  Greece,  the  fall  of  Rome,  move  into  place  as 
evidence  that  the  world  grows  better,  that  God  guides  humanity  to 
nobler  visions  and  grander  achievements. 


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As  we  meet  here  this  afternoon,  our  thoughts  are  invited  to  con¬ 
template  both  a  race  and  a  man — a  weak  race  brought  by  cruel  greed 
in  fear  and  anguish  to  this  continent,  kept  weak  and  denied  intellec¬ 
tual  progress,  held  in  fetters  by  the  power  of  an  ever-growing  and  at 
last  mighty  government — a  strong  man  who,  coming  up  among  a 
feeble  folk,  imbibed  the  love  for  humanity  from  his  mother’s  breast, 
and,  sailing  to  his  father’s  country  for  education,  gave  his  young, 
vigorous  life  to  fight  for  the  country  of  his  fathers  until  that  fight 
was  won,  and  then  took  upon  his  heart  and  mind  the  weak  and  help¬ 
less  race  whose  fetters  had  been  suddenly  removed,  making  them 
through  ignorance  and  degradation  a  menace  to  the  well-being  of  the 
republic.  Look  at  the  cargoes  of  Africans  moving  westward  year 
after  year  in  the  stifling  holds  of 
slow-sailing  ships,  dumped  in 
chains  upon  the  eastern  shore, 
multiplying  in  helpless  dependence 
over  all  these  beautiful  valleys 
and  plains.  Does  it  not  move  you 
to  ask,  “Where  is  God?”  Wait, 
my  friends.  By  and  by,  from  an 
island  in  the  western  ocean,  a 
swifter  ship  shall  sail  eastward 
with  a  young  man  on  board,  of 
large  powers,  but  almost  without 
purpose  save  that  he  will  follow 
his  Master,  Christ,  wherever  He 
leads,  who  shall  be  trained  in  col¬ 
lege  and  war  to  lift  this  people 
into  useful  service ;  who  shall  be 
the  great  pioneer  in  transforming 
the  misdirected  instincts  of  a  de¬ 
bilitated  race  into  the  fine,  free, 
organic  powers  of  American  citi¬ 
zens.  We  can  never  forget  the 
sufferings  and  sorrows  of  those 

helpless  ones  through  the  long  years  of  a  century  and  a  half.  Nor 
can  we  forget  the  anxieties  and  fears  and  the  heart-searchings  as  to 
duty  of  those  among  whom  they  lived.  The  faithful  record  of  that 
history  we  leave  with  God,  and  praise  Him  that  when  the  day  of 
deliverance  came,  the  teacher,  leader,  helper,  uplifter,  also  came. 

When  the  first  missionaries  sailed  from  Boston  for  the  Sandwich 
Islands  eighty  years  ago  to  begin  the  work  of  uplifting  and  redeem¬ 
ing  the  Hawaiian  natives,  not  the  wildest  imagination  could  foresee 
that  out  of  that  movement  and  from  one  of  those  islands  should  come 
the  torce,  the  man,  who  would  be  to  millions  of  helpless  Negroes  in 


Samuel  Chapman  Armstrong  at  twenty-one 


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our  Southern  country  the  uplifter  into  the  thoughtful,  loving,  diligent 
apprehension  of  their  own  duties,  into  a  gentle  and  rational  patriotism. 
Love  of  the  degraded  natives  of  the  Hawaiian  Islands,  stirred  in 
New  England  breasts,  was  the  original  force  that  produced  the 
heroic  man,  the  Christian  service,  for  which  we  thank  God  to-day. 

I  ask  you  to  consider  for  a  little  while  how  admirably  fitted 
Samuel  Chapman  Armstrong  was  for  his  great  work.  He  was  born, 
as  I  said,  in  the  midst  of  a  people  who  needed  help,  and  to  give  help 
to  whom  his  countrymen  and  his  own  father  and  mother  had  traveled 
thousands  of  miles.  He  knew  from  childhood  the  perils  and  sorrows 
of  a  degraded,  ignorant  race,  and  he  knew  also  that  there  is  no  work 
so  glorious  as  the  uplifting  of  such  a  people.  When  he  went  to 


Armstrong's  birthplace  on  the  Island  of  Maui,  H.  I. 

America  for  his  education,  he  went  to  a  college  among  whose 
students,  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  the  greatest  American  move¬ 
ment  for  the  redemption  of  the  world  was  born.  He  imbibed,  during 
his  college  course,  something  of  the  inspiration  of  that  movement. 
He  lived  in  the  home  of  one  who  was  and  had  been  for  many  years 
the  president  of  that  great  missionary  society.  He  was  taught  by 
Mark  Hopkins  the  sublime  philosophy  of  Christianity,  and  that 
means  the  rescue  of  the  lost.  He  learned  from  Albert  Hopkins,  on 
whose  window  in  our  chapel  are  the  words,  “They  that  turn  many  to 
righteousness  shall  shine  as  the  stars  forever  and  ever,”  as  he  never 
knew  it  before,  the  majesty  of  Christian  loving  and  living.  He  did  with 


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his  might  in  college  what  his  hands  found  to  do.  I  remember  that 
when  describing  fencing  with  him  for  exercise,  his  chum  told  me  that 
the  intense  keenness  of  his  eye  and  the  swift  plunge  of  the  foil  some¬ 
times  terrified  him.  He  thought  that  Armstrong  would  actually  run 
him  through.  He  was  physically  sound  and  strong.  I  have  heard 


Mark  Hopkins,  President  of  Williams  College  from  1836  to  1872 

him  say  since  his  graduation  that  he  was  glad  there  was  no  such 
amazingly  developed  system  of  athletics  in  college  in  his  day  as  now 
exists.  He  could  not  understand  such  an  amount  of  money  and  force 
devoted  to  a  subordinate  purpose  in  college.  I  thought  as  I  listened 
to  him  saying  this  :  “Ah,  my  friend,  if  you  were  in  college  now,  you 
would  yield  to  no  man  in  vigor  of  tackling  on  the  football  field,  or  in 


The  President’s  House  at  Williamstown  where  General  Armstrong  lived  while  in  college 

the  swiftness  and  precision  with  which  the  baseball  would  be  hurled 
to  put  a  man  out  on  third  base!”  His  athletic  prowess  would  have 
given  him  renown  and  that  would  have  added  scope  to  his  moral 
power.  Yet  the  play  of  college  life  would  have  remained  play  to  him. 
He  was  intense.  I  think  of  Von  Moltke,  the  great  Prussian  general, 


The  old  plantation  “Mansion  House”  which  was  General  Armstrong’s  Hampton  home 


8 


in  the  dawn  of  a  summer  day  of  1 870,  riding  over  a  plain  in  eastern 
France  from  which  the  Jura  range  was  visible  and  planning  for  the 
next  movement.  His  young  aid-de-camp,  enraptured  by  the  beauty  of 
the  scene,  calls  the  old  general’s  attention  to  the  mountains  glorified 
by  the  advancing  color  of  the  rising  sun.  The  great  general  turns 
and  says  severely,  “Do  not  speak  to  me  of  your  private  affairs.” 
Armstrong  might  have  said  that,  but  the  moment  it  was  said  he 
would  have  seen  the  fun  of  it.  But  he  was  always  dead  in  earnest. 

He  went  into  the  service  of  his  country.  This  was  his  country, 
though  he  was  born  in  a  distant  island  of  the  sea,  for  it  was  his  father’s 
country,  and  his  love  of  it  and  service  for  it  early  won  him  citizenship. 
N  ow  he  is  glad  that  those  islands,  as  they  were  not  in  his  boyhood,  are 
a  territory  of  the  country  he  loved  and  for  which  he  lived  and  died.  In 
the  war  he  learned  to  control  men,  and  that  means  that  his  insight  was 
quickened,  his  patience  was  enlarged,  his  judgment  of  men  made  com¬ 
prehensive,  and  his  swift  resort  to  wise  measures  in  emergency  became 
a  habit.  It  does  not  mean  that  he  for  a  moment  lost  one  atom  of  his 
hatred  of  meanness  or  of  his  love  for  righteousness  or  of  his  love  for 
humanity.  What  a  series  of  promotions  his  war  record  was  !  In  nearly 
every  important  movement  from '  the  beginning  to  the  end  he  had  a 
part,  and  he  learned  to  love  the  black  race  in  his  two  years’  command 
of  Negroes.  When  the  war  was  over  and  the  Southern  people  lay  ex¬ 
hausted  and  quivering  with  pain  and  bewildered  by  their  relations  to 
the  freed  slaves,  the  Northern  people,  chastened  by  the  desperate 
struggle  and  the  desolation  of  their  households,  in  the  nobility  of  their 
love  for  the  colored  people,  gave  to  them,  when  they  could  not  well 
use  it,  the  right  of  suffrage.  Assigned  to  duty  in  this  region  by  the 
Freedmen’s  Bureau  for  the  care  of  ten  counties,  having  studied  the 
condition  of  the  race  and  long  since  perceived  that  education  of  head 
and  hand  and  heart— the  development  of  character — could  alone  save 
this  enfeebled  people  from  misery  and  crime,  General  Armstrong  said 
to  himself  :  “I  will  found  a  school  to  educate  teachers  for  this  race. 
I  will  begin  in  a  humble  way  a  more  patriotic,  more  difficult  work  than 
fighting  for  my  country.  I  will  open  the  door  for  this  people,  whom  I 
dearly  love,  into  intelligence,  self-control,  manhood,  and  woman¬ 
hood,  and  send  my  pupils  over  all  this  Southern  land  to  be  centers 
of  light  and  love,  examples  of  diligence  and  loyalty  to  the  noblest 
motives.”  Being  thus  trained  by  God,  it  is  not  too  much  tosay  that 
he  was  inspired  of  God.  His  early  visions  of  this  service,  his  heroic 
resolve,  his  single-minded  consecration,  his  undaunted  advance  over 
obstacles — these  were  because  God  was  in  him,  guiding  and  inspiring 
more  and  more  visibly  to  the  end. 

In  the  fragmentary  notes  left  by  the  great  Lincoln  of  the  mem¬ 
orable  conflict  between  himself  and  Douglas  in  Illinois  in  the  autumn 
of  1858,  are  found  these  words:  “Suppose  it  is  true  that  the  Negro 
is  inferior  to  the  white  man  in  the  gifts  of  Nature,  is  it  not  the  exact 


9 


reverse  of  justice  that  the  white  man  should,  for  that  reason,  take  from 
the  Negro  any  part  of  that  little  which  he  has  had  given  him  ?”  These 
are  manly  words,  but  what  Armstrong  would  have  said,  what  he  did  say 
by  his  choice  of  life  work,  was:  “If  it  be  true  that  the  Negro  is  inferior 
to  the  white  man  in  the  gifts  of  Nature,  it  should  be  the  high  mis¬ 
sion  and  the  supreme  joy  of  the  white  man  to  help  the  Negro  make 
the  very  utmost  of  what  he  has  had  given  him.” 

And  then  the  site  to  be  selected  for  the  school.  It  was  better 
that  it  be  near  enough  the  North  to  command  and  receive  attention 
from  Northern  Christians,  and  yet  it  must  be  in  the  South,  easy  of 


access  for  those  to  be  helped.  So,  on  the  very  shore  on  which  the 
ancestors  of  this  people  had  been  dropped  in  chains,  on  soil  of  that 
state  where  for  four  long  years  the  fiercest  battles  over  the  destiny 
of  the  Negro  had  been  fought,  a  soil  consecrated  by  the  blood  of 
thousands  of  Northern  and  Southern  heroes,  almost  in  sight  of  those 
waters  where  the  deadly  grapple  of  the  hugh  Merrimac  and  the 
little  Monitor  occurred — on  this  soil  shall  they  over  whom  and  for 
whom  all  this  carnage  really  was,  be  taught  the  sweet  reasonableness 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus  Chirst,  the  arts  of  industry,  and  the  true 


10 


service  of  country.  Here,  not  very  far  from  where  the  first  college 
in  the  Southern  country,  the  second  college  in  America,  was  planted 
(but  only  for  the  whites)  shall  be  erected  a  normal  school  which 
shall  go  a  little  way  towards  healing  the  wounds  that  cruelties  and 
war  have  inflicted,  and  towards  making  it  possible  for  the  whites 
and  the  blacks  to  live  together  in  charity  and  peace. 

But  he  did  not  confine  himself  to  the  training  of  the  Negroes. 
The  passion  for  studying  how  to  uplift  a  race  got  such  hold  of  him 
that  Indians  were  admitted  in  response  to  an  application  from  one  of 
their  true  friends.  The  problem  of  lifting  must  vary  somewhat  with 
the  differing  characteristics  of  different  races,  but,  fascinated  by  these 
great  problems,  he  saw  that  the  presence  of  the  two  races  in  the  same 
institution  might  stimulate  the  teachers  and  be  of  mutual  benefit  to 
the  two  races.  All  uplifting  of  a  race,  like  every  true  redemption, 
must  be  made  effective  by  quickening  and  guiding  individual  minds. 
Armstrong  knew  from  his  college  days  what  that  meant,  and  it  stirs 
the  blood  to  read  the  simple  confession  recorded  in  one  of  his  papers, 
that  whatever  good  teaching  he  had  done  was  Mark  Hopkins  teaching 
through  him — the  teaching  of  a  greater  teacher,  judicious  and  symmetri¬ 
cal  in  character  like  the  round  circle  which  Everett  applied  to  Wash¬ 
ington,  the  teaching  of  this  great  teacher  handed  down  through  him¬ 
self  to  God’s  little  ones. 

Armstrong  did  not  concern  himself  much  with  the  surface  of 
things ;  he  went  straight  to  the  heart  of  every  problem.  He  was  no 
dealer  in  fine  phrases,  no  seeker  after  soft  places,  no  lover  of  Lydian 
airs  or  delicate  perfumes  ;  he  was  a  man,  an  earnest,  downright  man  ; 
and  “the  image  of  God  cut  in  ebony,”  as  an  old  writer  calls  it,  was  to 
him  just  as  truly  an  image  of  God  as  the  Phidian  Zeus  or  the  Venus 
of  Milo.  It  was  the  divine  that  he  cared  for.  For  this  reason  the 
Negro  was  more  attractive  than  the  Greek,  if  he  needed  help. 
Therefore,  he  was  thus  far  fitted  for  this  great  work  in  which  he  must 
grapple  with  Southern  prejudices;  bear  patiently  and  sympathetically 
the  criticisms  and  sneers  of  a  high-tempered  and  just  then  naturally 
exasperated  people;  appeal  unceasingly  to  cold,  calculating  Northern¬ 
ers  for  aid ;  bear  courageously  the  stupidities  and  frivolities  that 
slavery  had  begotten  and,  worse  than  all,  the  lapses  and  relapses  that 
sudden  liberty  made  inevitable.  He  aimed  at  broad  results  and  if  he 
was  sure  that  those  results  were  coming,  the  fashions  and  manners, 
the  sneers  and  criticisms  of  onlookers,  nay,  the  trivialities  and  mis¬ 
conceptions  and  ingratitudes  of  those  for  whom  he  was  working,  did 
not  greatly  disturb  him.  Nevertheless,  what  faith  was  required  to  be 
sure  that  the  results  were  coming !  What  a  heroism,  in  those  con¬ 
ditions,  “to  bate  no  jot  of  heart  or  hope  but  steer  right  onward  ”! 

“Endurance  is  the  crowning  quality, 

And  patience  all  the  passion  of  great  heart ; 


Samuel  Chapman  Armstrong  at  thirty-three 


These  are  their  stay,  and  when  the  leaden  world 
Sets  its  hard  face  against  their  fateful  thought, 

And  brute  strength,  like  a  scornful  conquerer, 

Clangs  his  huge  mace  down  in  the  other  scale, 

The  inspired  soul  but  flings  his  patience  in, 

And  slowly  that  outweighs  the  ponderous  globe, — 

One  faith  against  a  whole  earth’s  unbelief, 

One  soul  against  the  flesh  of  all  mankind.  ” 

There  was  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  fun  in  Armstrong’s  mind. 
He  saw  the  comical  side  of  every  situation,  and  the  humor  of  the  sharp 
contrasts  between  the  ideal  and  the  real  helped  him  on.  In  a  letter 
written  for  his  class  report  twenty  years  ago,  in  answer  to  the  request 
to  state  what  he  had  published,  he  said  :  “I  have  published  nothing 
but  a  succession  of  howls  for  money  for  the  Hampton  School,  to  which 


12 


the  dear  public  have  on  the  whole  liberally  responded,  though,  as  in 
war,  only  one  shot  in  five  hundred  hits.  ”  He  loved  literature  and 
scholarship,  but  the  idea  that  he  could  have  any  relation  to  these  fine 
attainments  in  his  absorbing  work  struck  him  as  comical.  Those  who 
knew  him  well  can  almost  hear  him  laugh  as  he  wrote  the  words.  The 
fun  in  him  was  indomitable.  Neither  fruitful  danger,  nor  collossal 


General  Armstrong’s  grave  in  the  cemetery  at  Hampton 

tasks,  nor  broken  nerves,  nor  religious  worship,  could  stop  its  flow. 
Yet  with  all  his  vitality,  his  intense  earnestness,  his  indifference  to 
petty  things,  his  fun,  and  his  faith,  God  only  knows  the  discourage¬ 
ments  that  his  heroic  soul  encountered  in  the  great  work  to  which  he 
gave  his  life.  It  is  because  God,  to  whom  he  uttered  his  appeals  for 
help  in  his  great  work,  knew  of  struggles  and  disappointments  and 
comforted  him  by  the  answers  to  his  appeals,  that  we  find  in  his  post¬ 
humous  papers  the  declaration  that  “Prayer  is  the  greatest  thing  in 
the  world.”  That,  you  know,  is  not  what  Drummond  says.  He  says 


13 


that  “Love  is  the  greatest  thing  in  the  world.”  But  there  will  not 
be  much  prayer  to  God  without  love  for  Him  and  His  will,  and  prayer 
rests  on  the  very  foundation  of  God’s  love  to  us.  So  you  see  Arm¬ 
strong  and  Drummond  are  not  very  far  apart.  Moreover,  Armstrong’s 
prayer  was  love— yet  how  he  hated  cant !  He  was  the  last  man  to  be 
willing  to  claim  publicly  that  God  had  anwered  his  prayer  or  that  his 
love  to  his  fellow-men  was  anything  super-eminent. 

You  know,  friends,  that  this  great  school  whose  privileges  you 
enjoy  has  cost  much,  but  you  do  not  always  realize  it.  It  has  cost  much 
to  many  small  and  large  givers  in  the  North  who  gave  of  their  hard- 
earned  savings  to  the  colored  people  and  the  Indians  ;  much  to  patient 
and  gifted  teachers.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  no  school  in  the 
North  can  present  in  its  list  of  teachers  a  more  distinguished  roll  of 
women  than  this  institution.  Armstrong  knew  instinctively  a  noble 
woman.  He  knew  also  how  to  attach  and  keep  such  in  this  great  work. 
In  this  and  in  ways  innumerable  this  school  owes  infinitely  much  to 
him  who  conceived  the  idea  of  establishing  it  here  and  for  twenty-five 
years  poured  an  irrepressible  stream  of  his  own  life-blood  into  its  daily 
ongoing  and  upbuilding,  with  joy  indeed,  but  often  with  pain,  until  at 
last  he  had  given  all  that  blood,  and  fell  a  martyr  to  his  loving  zeal. 

My  friends,  I  love  to  think  of  him,  not  rushing  up  and  down 
before  his  moving  lines  in  the  hot  battle,  apparently  swallowing  bullets 
with  the  charmed  life  of  Napoleon  ;  not  standing  on  a  platform  and 
painting  for  a  Northern  audience  the  sad  picture  of  a  race  rapidly  mul¬ 
tiplying,  but  likely  to  stumble,  fall,  rapidly  die,  because  with  so  little 
inheritance  of  character,  and  arousing  his  hearers  to  a  keen  sympathy 
with  the  lofty  but  not  unattainable  aims  of  this  school ;  nor  even  in 
the  loneliness  and  complete  absorption  of  prayer  to  his  Heavenly 
Father  when  he  touched  the  lever  that  moves  the  world ;  but  teaching 
humbly  the  slow-moving  minds  of  his  pupils  the  great  principles  of  the 
law  of  love.  I  love  to  think  of  him,  I  say,  teaching  them  to  think,  to 
get  hold  of  the  ideas  of  cause  and  effect,  sin  and  punishment,  forgive¬ 
ness  and  love,  and  then  driving  home  to  them  with  the  explosive, 
volcanic  earnestness  of  the  Irish  temperament  and  with  Saxon  perti¬ 
nacity,  the  truth  that  work — steady,  diligent  work — was  to  be  the  cause 
of  their  progress,  the  deliverance  for  them  from  sin  and  misery,  the 
sure  sign  that  they  were  worthy  of  God’s  forgiveness  and  love.  With 
that  lofty  carriage  of  the  head,  with  that  keen,  penetrating  flash  of  the 
eye,  with  that  swift,  jerky  utterance  ( through  it  all  the  tenderest 
sympathy  gleaming  forth),  standing  before  his  students  with  their  dark, 
pathetic  faces,  he  was  more  than  general,  more  than  orator,  more  than 
a  victorious  Israel — he  was  a  fellow -worker  with  God,  inspired,  sublime. 

As  the  years  went  on,  more  and  more  he  emphasized  the  indus¬ 
trial  side.  More  and  more  he  saw  that  what  the  colored  people  need 
is  not  Greek  culture  of  the  head,  not  chiefly  a  knowledge  of  history 
and  literature,  but  enough  training  of  the  brain  to  make  them  think 


14 


well,  control  their  lower  desires,  and  love  their  fellow-men,  but  mainly 
industrial  training,  steadiness,  and  mastery  of  trades,  loving,  skilful, 
use  of  hands  and  eyes  and  voice — and  he  so  moulded  the  Institute  that 
wherever  his  pupils  went  they  should  add  to  the  productive,  sanitary 
forces  of  the  community  and  do  something  to  make  someone  better 
and  happier. 

Think  of  the  great  schools  that  have  had  their  origin  in  this 
school ;  think  of  the  hundreds  of  little  schools  that  have  been  guided 
by  the  student  graduates  of  this  school ;  think  of  the  thousands  of 
children  that  throughout  the  South  have  learned  how  to  read,  cipher, 
write,  and  speak  properly,  to  watch  the  growth  of  plants  and  animals, 
to  know  something  of  the  history  of  our  country  and  of  the  world,  to 
whom  the  world  is  such  a  different  place  because  dear  General  Arm¬ 
strong  lived  and  died  here.  Think  of  the  hundreds  of  steady,  produc¬ 
tive  farmers,  carpenters,  tinsmiths,  blacksmiths,  bricklayers,  leather 
workers,  who  have  gone  out  from  here  to  contribute  to  the  comfort 
and  improvement  of  their  own  race  and  to  the  stability  of  society,  and 
think  of  the  hundreds  of  mothers  trained  to  neatness  and  thrift,  with 
enough  perception  and  love  of  knowledge  to  quicken  in  their  little 
ones  the  thirst  for  respectable  attainments  and  the  sincere  love  of 
home,  and  all  this,  too,  because  dear  General  Armstrong  lived  and 
died  here.  The  cost  has  been  indeed  great,  but  the  harvest  also 
wonderfully  great.  Had  this  school  with  its  thirty-three  years  of  toil 
and  discouragements,  but  also  years  of  leaps  and  bounds  in  progress, 
years  of  amazing  expansion  in  resources,  done  nothing  more  than  to 
send  out  one  Booker  Washington,  it  would  have  been  a  glorious 
success.  Had  Williams  College  no  other  graduate  than  Samuel 
Chapman  Armstrong,  it  wou'.d  have  amply  paid  for  its  cost,  for  all  the 
hopes  and  fears,  all  the  prayers  and  tears,  all  the  self-denying  gifts 
that  have  marked  its  progress  for  a  hundred  years.  But  because 
Williams  College  sent  forth  ministers  and  missionaries,  workers  for 
the  good  of  men  from  the  beginning,  it  sent  forth  Armstrong  And 
because  this  great  school  had  Armstrong  for  its  founder  and  head,  it 
sent  forth  Booker  Washington,  and  because  it  has  sent  forth  one 
Washington,  it  will  surely  send  forth  many  more  to  make  upright, 
industrious,  thrifty,  property-holding,  beneficent  citizens  of  your  race. 

“Hampton  must  not  go  down,”  did  you  write,  my  beloved  class¬ 
mate  ?  It  cannot  go  down  with  such  a  history  as  you  made  for  it  by 
the  twenty-five  years  of  your  consecrated  life  and  by  the  benediction 
of  your  loving  death.  It  must  go  onward,  upward,  guided  by  those 
whom  you  have  trained  into  service,  ever  gaining  more  Christ-like 
power,  ever  holding  up  the  cross,  and  ever  sending  forth  its  pupils  to 
bless  the  nation  and  to  win  the  crown. 

The  motto  of  the  class  of  ’62  in  Williams  College,  of  which  Arm¬ 
strong  and  I  were  members,  was  three  Greek  words  meaning,  “After 
the  contest,  the  victory,”  or  more  exactly,  “After  the  cross,  the 


15 


crown.”  No  member  of  our  class,  no  member  of  any  class,  lived  with 
that  motto  for  the  guiding  star  of  his  life  more  truly  than  Armstrong. 
Because  of  so  living  he  could  say  with  an  effect  which  none  could 
gainsay,  “What  is  commonly  called  sacrifice  is  the  best,  happiest  use 
of  one’s  life  and  resources.”  He  had  learned  to  the  full  the  meaning 
of  the  thought,  “Christ  crucified,  the  power  of  God.” 

It  was  in  this  beautiful  church  which  his  magic  touch  had  evoked 
upon  this  soil,  in  this  crowning  building  of  your  school,  that  the  last 
tribute  of  honor  was  paid  to  him.  It  was  right  here  in  front  of  me 
that  his  still  form  lay  in  a  coffin  draped  with  the  stars  and  stripes, 
while  two  Negro  boys  standing  at  the  head  and  two  Indian  boys  at  the 
foot  held  up  the  American  and  the  Hampton  flags.  It  must  have 
been  a  touching  sight.  Even  to  us  who,  in  imagination  only,  call  up 
that  scene,  the  significance  is  large  and  fine.  The  two  races  that  he 
had  so  warmly  embraced  in  his  affections  guard  him  tenderly  in  death. 
These  four  figures,  in  their  loving  attitude,  promise  that  in  their  races 
shall  forever  live  loyalty  to  him,  and  that  means  loyalty  to  all  to  which 
he  was  loyal — loyalty  to  the  dear  old  flag,  loyalty  to  all  the  weak  and 
poor  over  whom  it  floats,  loyalty  to  the  divine  Christ  who  came  to 
save  us  all,  in  whose  honor  he  called  into  being  this  great  school  and 
from  whose  gracious  lips  he  shall  hear,  if  he  has  not  already  heard, 
the  words:  “Inasmuch  as  you  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of 
these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me.” 

Yonder  grave  with  its  Hawaiian  tufa  and  its  Williams’  granite 
shall  become,  nay,  has  become,  one  of  the  Meccas  of  humanity. 
Anglo-Saxons — Africans— Indians — will,  in  the  coming  years,  go  there 
and  think  of  the  great  love  this  man  had  for  humanity,  and  of  the  great 
service  he  did  for  all  the  land.  They  will  think,  as  they  recall  his 
life,  that  the  noblest  patriotism  in  America  means  no  narrow  love  of 
one’s  own  race,  but  has  its  holiest  inspiration  in  the  loving  condescen¬ 
sion  of  Him  who,  “having  made  of  one  blood  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth,”  gave  His  only  begotten  and  well-beloved  Son  that  “whosover 
believeth  in  Him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlasting  life” — that 
only  and  well-beloved  Son,  who,  “being  in  the  form  of  God,  counted  it 
not  a  prize  to  be  on  an  equality  with  God,  but  emptied  Himself, 
taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  likeness  of  men  :  and 
being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  He  humbled  Himself,  becoming 
obedient  even  unto  death,  yea,  the  death  of  the  cross.” 

Follow  Him.  Imitate  Him.  Get  all  the  learning  and  wisdom 
and  power  you  can,  and  empty  yourselves  of  it,  pouring  your  life  out, 
as  Armstrong  did  in  imitation  of  the  Master,  into  the  uplifting  of 
those  that  are  bowed  down  ;  into  the  helping  of  anyone  you  can  find, 
without  regard  to  creed,  color,  or  race,  who  needs  help.  May  God 
make  you  true  to  the  consecration  and  the  inspiration  of  your  founder 
and  the  glory  of  your  precious  inheritance  ! 


SAMUEL  CHAPMAN  ARMSTRONG 


Born  in  Wailuku,  Maui,  Hawaiian  Islands,  January  30,  1839 
Graduated  from  Williams  College,  Mass.,  in  the  class  of  1862 
Entered  Union  Army,  August,  1862,  as  Captain  in  the  125th  N.  Y. 
Volunteers 

Took  command  of  the  9th  U.  S.  Colored  Troops,  fall  of  1863 

Mustered  out  in  Nov.  1865,  as  Brevet  Brigadier-General  of  Volunteers 

Made  officer  of  Freedmen’s  Bureau  on  Va.  Peninsula,  March,  1866 

Founded  Hampton  Institute  for  Negro  youth,  April,  1868 

Began  work  for  Indians  at  Hampton  Institute,  1878 

Received  LL.  D.  from  Williams,  1887 

Died  May  1 1,  1893 


HAMPTON  INSTITUTE,  the  well-known  school  for 
Negroes  and  Indians,  was  founded  by  General  Samuel  Chap¬ 
man  Armstrong  in  1868,  on  the  shore  of  Hampton  Roads, 
near  Fort  Monroe,  Virginia. 

It  is  an  undenominational  school,  controlled  by  a  board 
of  seventeen  trustees.  The  school  property  includes  about 
1 100  acres  of  land  and  140  buildings,  among  which  are  a 
church,  academic  hall,  library,  dormitories,  and  buildings 
for  the  teaching  of  agriculture  and  the  mechanical  trades. 

The  number  of  students  (1916-1917)  is  1  838,  of  whom 
31  are  Indians,  446  colored  children  in  the  Whittier  Train¬ 
ing  School,  and  438  teachers  in  the  Summer  School. 
The  934  boarding  pupils  provide  their  own  board  and  cloth¬ 
ing,  partly  in  cash  and  partly  in  labor  at  the  school.  But  the 
great  majority  of  students  cannot  pay  their  tuition,  which  is 
one  hundred  dollars  per  pupil.  This  may  be  divided  into  an 
academic  scholarship  of  $70  and  an  industrial  one  of  $30* 
A  full  scholarship  may  be  endowed  for  $2500. 

Many  Sunday  schools,  associations,  and  friends  of  the  two 
races  are  interested  to  give-  these  scholarships,  and  larger 
or  smaller  sums  year  by  year,  according  to  their  ability, 
and  thus  assist  Hampton  in  raising  the  $133,000  necessary 
each  year  for  current  expenses  in  addition  to  its  regular 
income.  Sunday-school  classes  are  also  often  interested  in 
sending  Christmas  boxes  to  graduates  teaching  in  the  South 
or  West. 

M  ore  than  9000  young  people  have  had  the  benefit  of 
Hampton’s  ideals  and  training.  They  have  for  the  most 
part  gone  back  to  the  Western  plains  or  to  the  Southern 
states,  and  there  have  become  centers  of  influence  — 
teachers,  farmers,  skilled  mechanics,  thrifty  homemakers — 
leading  their  people  more  by  deeds  than  by  words  to  a 
higher  plane  of  citizenship. 

H-  B  FRISSELL,  Principal  Hampton,  Va. 


FORM  OF  BEQUEST 

I  give  and  devise  to  the  Trustees  of  The  Hampton  Normal  and 

Ag7'icultural  Institute ,  Hampton ,  Virginia ,  the  sum  of . 

dollars ,  payable  etc. 


